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The new SanDisk Ultra Plus solid-state drive is an upgrade to the SanDisk Ultra that came out last year. The Plus notation doesn't necessarily mean better performance, but rather lower total cost. The new drive, at launch, is among the most affordable on the market and in fact is more affordable than the SanDisk Ultra.

For that reason, it's easy to look past the drive's comparatively unimpressive performance. With the Plus in the name, one might expect the drive to be comparable to the Samsung 840 Pro or the Plextor M5 Pro. As it turns out, in performance the new Ultra Plus is no match for any recent top-tier SSD.

That said, the SanDisk Ultra Plus is in no way a slow SSD. It still makes a great upgrade for those moving on from using a hard drive as the main drive of their computer, be it a laptop or a desktop. If you need something faster, even if it costs more, check out this list of alternatives.

Coming in the now-familiar 7mm chassis, the new SanDisk Ultra Plus looks very different from the SanDisk Ultra or the SanDisk Extreme, with a premium finish. It's the first from SanDisk that comes with a piece of framing that can add another 2.5mm to its thickness in case you want to use in places where standard 9.5mm internal drives are used.

The new 7mm SanDisk Ultra Plus is very different from its 9.5mm predecessor, the SanDisk Ultra.
Dong Ngo/CNET

The new drive does not, however, come with a drive-bay converter that would help it fit in places where 3.5-inch desktop drives are used. This is not a big deal, since you can safely use an SSD inside a desktop computer without securing it to the chassis. Since it has no moving parts, staying loose inside a computer doesn't really affect an SSD's performance or durability.

On the inside, the new SanDisk Ultra Plus is also very different from its predecessors. It's the first drive from SanDisk that uses the new Marvell SS889175 controller, which is designed for both SSD and regular SATA standards. The controller supports SATA 3 (6Gbps), and the Ultra Plus is also backward-compatible with SATA 2 (3Gbps) and SATA (1.5Gbps). You'll want to use the drive with a computer that supports SATA 3, however, to get the most out of it.

As for flash memory, the Ultra Plus uses SanDisk's own 19nm eX2 ABL MLC NAND. While this is multiple-layer cell memory, which is popular in consumer-grade SSDs, the Ultra Plus' type of memory is capable of having a small portion work in single-layer cell mode, which is similar to the memory used in enterprise-grade SSDs. This mode is called nCache, and the drive's firmware determines how much of its total capacity is used for this. According to SanDisk, the SLC nCache portion is allotted dynamically and remains less than 1GB.

In short, the unique feature of the Ultra Plus is that it's a consumer-grade SSD that can potentially offer the experience of a much more expensive enterprise-grade SSD.

The new SanDisk Ultra Plus is designed to use just 0.12 watt of power during operation. While this is not the lowest I've seen, it's still very low and will help improve the battery life a great deal, compared with a 2.5-inch hard drive.

CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He now manages CNET San Francisco Labs, reviews 3D printers, networking/storage devices, and also writes about other topics from online security to new gadgets and how technology impacts the life of people around the world.
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